“How’s Angie?” Rob shouted at him, and John had to be satisfied with giving his brother a dirty look. It did no good to lecture Rob, so he turned his attention to the floats, elaborate platforms heaped with bunting and flags and flowers in primary colors. Ogilvie was a socially active place and every club, league, and association had a float: the Junior League, the Garden Club, the Knights of Columbus and the Holy Name Society, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Rifle Club. Every one of Ogilvie’s churches had some kind of float, some more than one. The First Baptist gospel choir went by in scarlet robes with golden tassels around their necks, followed by a whole battalion of Confederate reenactors in full uniform. John was just starting to feel more cheerful when the Basket Girls’ float appeared.

Miss Maddie sat on an elevated chair in the middle, her gloved hands folded decorously on the basket in her lap. There was a great blue ribbon rosette on its handle, which meant that last year her basket had brought in the most money toward this year’s Jubilee. The rest of the Basket Girls walked alongside the float, all of them dressed to the teeth. Rivera was in a red polka-dot dress with a tiny cinched waist that made her look like a very tall and exotic Donna Reed, and even Angie, John saw, had been talked into dressing up.

He knew with absolute certainly that the sundress she was wearing—butter yellow with a scattering of purple flowers—had been borrowed from somebody else and pressed on her by Miss Maddie. He couldn’t think of another person in the world who could have talked her into that dress, which made him think of talking her out of it, which was not a good thing to be thinking about just now.

Not that he could look away from Angie in a dress. She pulled at the low-cut bodice, fiddled with the wide brim of the straw hat. For once her hair was neither pulled back in a ponytail or hidden under a scarf, and the breeze sent the curls dancing around her flushed face.

“Wow,” said Rob.

“Very sexy,” said Kai.

Together they turned to watch the Basket Girl float disappear down the street toward the park. At the next corner Patty-Cake Walker was watching John, her expression all fire and brimstone.

Ridley Smith was a nondescript forty-year-old mortician who was also Ogilvie’s mayor. The only thing southern about him, outwardly at least, was his voice, which was deep and melodious.